PDD: A miserable failure
It’s summer season in Kashmir and the people fail to come to terms with the power curtailment schedule that has been announced in November last by the Power Development Department (PDD).
The PDD department in Kashmir is still implementing the 6 to 16 hour power cuts ranging from area to area. As per the schedule that was announced last year all the areas were subject to various curtailment schedules and the department gave various reasons for resorting to such unmindful curtailments.
However, during winters the curtailments far exceeded the announced schedule and the PDD department resorted to more curtailments without citing any reason for the same. Even many projects that were to be completed during the winter months so that the power crisis could have eased also failed to meet their deadline and the people were made to face the harsh winter without any relief in sight.
Now what has alarmed the people is that this season Kashmir witnessed abundant of rains and snowfall, giving rise to the fact that the local generation in various power projects would increase.
Besides, the curtailments that were announced were meant for winter months, but the PDD has taken the people for a ride and no new schedule is being either worked out or announced so that the power woes faced by the people could be addressed.
Notably, the PDD is facing a huge gap between supply and demand of electricity in the valley during winters. Against the unrestricted load demand of 2200MW, peak load of around 1300 MW is being served in the valley.
As a matter of fact, the PDD department is forced to supply only 850MW of agreement load of domestic customers. The deficit of 900 MW is adjusted by load shedding.
However, the load shedding formula is applied on the general consumers alone. The various government offices where electricity is provided round the clock, no checking mechanism is put in place to stop the ever growing misuse of electricity.
Besides, various forces camps too are being provided electricity without installing meters and checking their monthly consumptions from time to time. The PDD officials feel it their privilege to target the common man alone and no effort is let down to harass the common consumers who despite all odds are submitting the monthly bills they receive from the department.
The PDD has been in a mess from the last two decades and any effort to bring in reforms in the department are meeting an iron wall that has been erected by some greedy and noncommittal officers who wish this mess to continue.
The government too on its part is letting the messy situation continue and in the process a common consumer is being harassed and victimized for none of his fault.
KV Network
